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09/30/2021 1/92 Set Up a Contact Form on your own Website with the Planio Help Desk
The Planio Help Desk App in Planio enables you to handle customer inquiries right from within Planio using all the Planio issue tracking features you love.
Normally, this is done via email. In this guide, however, we will look at setting up a customizable online form on your own website that sends your customer's messages directly to Planio where they'll appear as issues.
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Benefits
Reply to website inquiries directly from Planio using the Help Desk App. Don't let inquiries slip through the cracks in your overloaded email inbox. Work as a team on customer support. Become more efficient by using auto-replies and Help Desk templates. No need for server-side scripting to handle the contact form submissions.
HTML Form
You can send HTML form requests directly to Planio, as Planio will accept an unauthenticated POST request with application/x-www-form-urlencoded form data.
Therefore, we’re going to build a simple form with an action attribute that submits the form to Planio via the HTTP POST method.
Thank you for getting in touch.
You can download the entire HTML page here:contact-us.html.
When someone fills out this form, the message will show up in Planio as an issue as you can see here:
09/30/2021 4/92 A contact form message appears as issue in Planio
That’s just one of the examples of how you can use the Redmine API at Planio to streamline your processes. You’ll find more examples and documentation, including how to add your own custom fields to your contact forms, in our Redmine API documentation.
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09/30/2021 5/92 Create a custom workflow for recurring tasks
Planio is not only great for one-off projects. It really shines when it comes to recurring tasks that follow a certain workflow within your organization.
Follow along this guide to create a simple vacation approval workflow for your team members - and apply what you've learned to create your own custom workflows.
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Planio workflow basics
In Planio, every issue must belong to a tracker which defines its workflow. Let's look at this in more detail:
Trackers
We'd like to see trackers as special issue types. An issue must belong to exactly one tracker. Task, Support incident, Software bug, or -- you guessed it -- Vacation request would be great examples for a tracker.
Issue statuses
Issue statuses describe the different states, that an issue in Planio can have at any given moment. For instance, an issue can be Open, In progress, Waiting for review, or Closed. An issue will always have exactly one status and the status will likely change over time as people work on the issue.
Roles
Users in Planio have their own user account using which they take part in projects using one or more roles: While some users may take part as Manager, others may be regular Staff or e.g. Client. The role defines what a user can and cannot see or do in a given project. It also defines the user's workflow.
Workflows
The workflow brings it all together: A workflow defines for every possible combination of tracker and role which issue statuses are available. It defines for all its tracker's issues which status changes are allowed and which issue properties are visible and/or changeable.
Say what!? This is arguably the most complex (and powerful) part of Planio, but don't worry -- we will walk you through it and you will be a workflow expert in no time!
Technicalities of going on a vacation
We knew you would love this section. Dreaming of that deserted beach in the Caribbean? Let's request some vacation days and off we go.
In many companies, taking a vacation requires approval by a manager. Employees must submit a request mentioning the start and end date of the requested vacation and managers will approve or disapprove the request. Upon approval, the dates of that vacation can not be altered, and the vacation request is final. If disapproved, employees can alter their requested dates and re-request approval until -- hopefully -- they will be allowed their well-deserved days in the Caribbean.
We will now build this workflow in Planio allowing for actual vacation requests being made and approved. We will also show you how to visualise them on Planio's calendar, so you can get a great overview on who is on vacation at which point in time.
Tracker, Statuses, Roles, and Workflow
To implement this, we will create a Tracker called Vacation request, three Issue statuses called Open, Approved, and Rejected, and two Roles, called Manager and Staff.
Finally, we will tie all those together using a custom Workflow in Planio.
Create the tracker
First things first. Let's get down to business:
Navigate to Your avatar -> Administration -> Trackers, then click on New tracker. Enter Vacation request as Name. Select Open as the Default Status. Uncheck the Issues displayed in roadmap checkbox since we do not want to see vacation days on our project roadmaps. Uncheck all Standard fields checkboxes except the ones for Start date and Due date. We'll actually use those for the start and end of our vacations. Do not select anything in the Copy workflow from drop down. Click Create.
09/30/2021 6/92 Your tracker should look like this.
Create issue statuses
The steps are similar but slightly different for the three statuses Open, Approved, and Rejected.
Navigate to Your avatar -> Administration -> Issue statuses. Do you see a status called Open? Great, you can skip this step. Don't see it? Simply click on New status, enter Open in the Name field, and uncheck the Add to all workflows checkbox since we only want it for our Vacation request workflow. Then click on Create. Create the remaining statuses Approved and Rejected following the same pattern and make sure the Approved status has the Issue closed checkbox checked.
This is what your "Approved" status will look like.
Create a role
This one should be easy:
09/30/2021 7/92 Navigate to Your avatar -> Administration -> Roles and permissions. Do you see the roles Manager and Staff already? Great. You're done with this step. Those are actually the two basic roles your Planio account came with. Do not see the roles? Create them by clicking on New role. Enter the role's Name and ignore the rest for now, just be sure that the check boxes for permissions View calendar, Edit issues, View issues, and Add issues are checked. Repeat this for both the Manager and Staff roles.
Adding a role
Define the workflow
This is the fun part. Here is where it all comes together.
Navigate to Your avatar -> Administration -> Workflow. Select the Staff role and your Vacation request tracker. Uncheck the Only display statuses that are used by this tracker checkbox and click on Edit. The checkbox matrix that appears lets you configure all allowed status transitions for a given role and tracker. For instance, the Staff workflow should have the checkbox at the top and lower left checked. This means that members having the role Staff can create new issues with a status of Open. Additionally, they can set an issue having a current status of Rejected back to Open. Now, let's configure the Staff workflow according to the following screenshot:
Workflow for Staff role
09/30/2021 8/92 Click on Save. Next, select Manager as a role, make sure the Only display statuses that are used by this tracker checkbox is unchecked click on Edit again. Configure the Manager workflow according to the following screenshot:
Workflow for Manager role Click on Save.
Wait, what did we just do? Have a look at the screenshots again. What we defined is:
Managers can set an open vacation request to Approved or Rejected and a Rejected vacation request to Approved (in case they changed their mind). Staff can only set a Rejected vacation request back to Open. (This is for when they change their dates and want to re-request approval.)
Adapt field permissions
Now, let's customize the issue form fields a bit according to the issue status.
Still on the Workflow screen, select the Fields permissions tab. For Manager, set everything to read-only except the Subject. To save some clicks, you can copy a value to the entire row by clicking on the » symbol.
Fields permissions for Manager role For Staff, do the same except for the Start date and Due date fields:
09/30/2021 9/92 Fields permissions for Staff role This makes sure only Staff can actually set the dates for a vacation request and that those dates cannot be changed anymore, once approved.
Put it all to work in an actual project
That's enough of prep work. Let's try it out.
Start by creating a new project via Projects -> New project... Give your project a name, e.g. Vacation planning. Disable all apps but Issue tracking and Calendar. Select only your Vacation request tracker and nothing else. Click Create.
That's it, you're done. Your users can now use this project for your new vacation request planning workflow. In order to submit a vacation request, all they'd have to do is create a new issue. Selecting a start date and a due date will be required when creating vacation request issues and all other useless fields will be hidden.
Stripped down issue form for vacation requests
In order to try it out for yourself and play around with it, we recommend you create two users via your avatar -> Administration -> Users that have no administrator privileges and add them as Staff and Manager to your project respectively.
(If you try it out as an administrator, don't be alarmed by the fact that you can always choose from all statuses when updating an issue. That's normal if you're an admin. Regular users will only see the statuses as defined by their workflow.)
Bonus: The calendar view
What's up with the Calendar module we've enabled in the roles and your project, you ask yourself? Well, after adding a couple of vacation requests, check out the Calendar tab in your project. The Planio calendar will give you a nice monthly overview of all vacation requests which have been tracked.
09/30/2021 10/92 Vacation calendar view in Planio
By using a custom query, you can even create a calendar view that displays only approved vacation requests. Or create a query for your managers that shows only Open requests that have to be approved still.
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09/30/2021 11/92 Get productive with Planio in 10 Minutes
Planio is a powerful set of collaboration and project management tools which is flexible enough to adapt to almost every situation in the workplace.
Especially if your company hasn't used a tool like Planio before, we recommended to start small and add more features as you go.
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Keep it simple stupid
Nobody likes complicated -- and neither do we. If you're just starting, why not take a radical approach: Let's strip your Planio down to the bare minimum!
Don't worry - we aren't burning any bridges here. All bells and whistles will still be there when you need them later on.
Start with only one project
For starters, we recommend you only use one single project. Not more. Sure, you'll have a lot of stuff to do organise with Planio, and you can create as much content as you like. But have only one project in the beginning. Add more later if you need them.
Let's create a super simple project, shall we?
Navigate to Administration, then Projects. Have projects you created but don't use anymore? Archive all of them. Don't worry, you can always unarchive them later.
Archive unused projects
On the upper right, find the New project link in the contextual area and click it. Select a Name for your project. How about the name of your company or the name of your team? Let's not settle for My project or Test project. We're in it for the real deal, this time - actually getting stuff done. Don't bother with Identifier, Homepage, Subproject of, etc. You can skip those and have a look at the Apps section. Activate the following apps for a clean and simple project: Issue tracking, Documents, Forums, Blog, and Wiki. Be sure that the Task tracker is selected and click Create.
09/30/2021 12/92 Use only one project for everything in the beginning
If you've already invited other colleagues to Planio, be sure to add them to your new project using the Members tab. When selecting a role, choose Manager. If you haven't invited anyone yet, don't worry, we'll do that later.
One Workflow to track them all
Trackers let you define a unique workflow for recurring tasks like handling an incoming invoice or approving a purchase order according to predefined steps in a business process.
That's not what you were after when we said simple, right?
If all you want to do for now is manage, assign, and work together on tasks, head over to Administration -> Trackers and simply delete all but the Task tracker. Now, still in Administration, navigate to Issue statuses and delete all but the default New and Closed statuses. For the sake of consistency, rename New to Open.
Flatten your hierarchies
Roles are a powerful way to manage access control in Planio. They give you fine-grained control over the "who can do what" in your project.
Our hypothesis: Forget roles for now.
Navigate to Administration -> Roles and Permissions and delete all roles but the Manager role. Be sure to edit the Manager role and assign all available permissions. We want everybody on the team to be able to do everything for now. You can always restrict permissions later.
Less numerous enumerations
Getting the hang of it? Let's remove some more unused stuff for now.
Already in Administration, click on Enumerations. This where you define custom document categories, issue priorities and activities for time tracking. Delete all document categories and create a new one called General. Delete the Urgent and Immediate priority. High, Normal, and Low should be enough for now. Delete all activities and create a new one called General.
09/30/2021 13/92 Use only a few numerations
Feels good, doesn't it?
Get rid of unused fields
Don't feel like selecting trackers, categories, milestones, and % done for a simple task? Let's get rid of them and simplify our workflow.
Still in Administration, click on Workflow. Leave the select boxes to Manager and Task (our only role and our only tracker) and click Edit. Make sure that all six check boxes are checked, this will let everyone switch a task's status from Open to Closed and back.
A basic workflow
09/30/2021 14/92 Click Save. Now, select the Fields permissions tab, and - in both columns - set all select boxes to Read-only, except for the rows Subject, Description, Priority, and Assignee.
Reduce issue form fields to a healthy minimum
Click Save again.
Got it? By setting the fields to Read-only, we've actually removed them from the forms that are used to create and update tasks. It will make those forms much simpler and easier to fill out.
Afraid you'll miss a field later on? No problem, just switch it back from Read-only to the empty selection and the field will be visible again in forms.
Get to work!
That's it, you're done. Welcome to the most simple Planio setup.
What to do next? Here are some ideas:
Invite some colleagues
If you haven't, invite your team members to Planio.
Navigate to Administration, then Users. Click on Invite users via email and enter a couple of email addresses. If you're still learning how to use Planio, maybe invite only one or two colleagues at first. You can always add more later. Be sure that the checkbox next to Also invite these users to existing projects is checked and click on Invite.
09/30/2021 15/92 Invite colleagues to Planio
Create some content
Navigate to your project via the Projects menu at the top and check out the different sections.
But what are they for? Let's see:
Overview and Activity show you what's going on in your project. Skip them for now and come back a little later. Issues are single action items that need to be done. Some people say "tasks" or "work packages". A more technical term is "ticket". No matter what you call them, issues define work that can be assigned to people on your team. Their progress will always be tracked in Planio. The Blog is great for announcements. Have a new member join the team? Signed a new client? Have an important milestone to celebrate? Write a blog article and keep everybody in the loop. Within Documents, you can upload important office documents like Texts, Spreadsheets, Presentations, etc. The documents section is great for publishing finalized documents. While you still work on unfinished documents, you might want to use issues instead and attach current versions as you update them. The Wiki is your project's Wikipedia. You can create wiki pages with important content that you'd like to work on with the team, like a glossary, meeting minutes, process descriptions, you name it. A wiki is never finished. Everybody can and should be encouraged to add, update, restructure, and even remove (old) content. Updates to wiki pages are tracked and you can always jump back in time to see and compare older versions. The Forums can be used to discuss project related topics. Whenever you'd like feedback on an idea or would like to spark a conversation, write a forum post. You can select to watch interesting conversations and receive email updates about them. Or you can check in from time to time and read up on the latest posts when you feel like it.
Think twice before you send an email!
Now, what's the best way to adopt Planio in your everyday life? It's really simple actually. It all comes down to one easy habit to adopt: Think twice before you send an email!
Know that reflex to open up your email client and add all your colleagues in CC? Don't do that anymore!
Think about what it is you're writing. If you're looking to get work done, create an issue. If you want to announce something, use the blog. Have a PDF file to share, upload it to documents. Want to write meeting minutes or describe the new workflow for submitting a vacation request, update the wiki. Finally, if you just had an awesome idea and want feedback, write a forum post.
Encourage your colleagues to do the same, and enjoy less email, a better structure, and incredibly improved productivity!
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09/30/2021 17/92 Setting Up Your Planio Account for Agile Project Management
Planio lets you use agile methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban or Extreme programming for your projects. You can read a case study on exactly how Software AG, a customer, uses Planio to implement scrum by clicking here.
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Agile Methodologies
Agile methodologies includes a group of software development methods such as Scrum, Kanban or Extreme programming. They’re all based on the idea that requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.
This tutorial will help you set up your account for one of these methodologies.
What can you do with Planio's Agile App?
Once it’s set up, you'll be able to:
see all the sprint items on one board; drag-n-drop items or update them on the board; plan your sprints and create issue backlogs; generate burndown charts, cumulative flow charts, velocity charts and more.
Getting Set Up
Make sure that the Agile app is installed. Go to the Apps tab and install the Agile app.
Make sure the App is installed
Start Simple
We've found that you'll have the most success if you start off with a simple setup. Once you've completed a few sprints with Planio, you'll be in a better position to see which customizations make sense for you.
Plan a Sprint
If you don't have any issues in your project, add some issues now. Then, once your project has issues, it's time to plan your next sprint. Go to your project's Agile board, then click on Sprint planning in the sidebar. Next, click on New Sprint.
Give a name to your new sprint such as Sprint #1 and set the start date. Now, you can drag an issue from the Issues without sprint column to the sprint you just created.
09/30/2021 18/92 Drag and drop issues onto the next sprint
View Items on Your Agile Board and Create Sprint Views
Click on Agile board in the navigation bar and you'll see the issues laid out on the Agile board. By default, you'll see all issues in the project, rather than just the issues for the current sprint.
Therefore, we'll create and save a filter for the current sprint. Click on Add filter in the top right-hand corner and select the Sprint/Milestone. Make sure the Sprint/Milestone is set to the current sprint and click Save.
Set the filter to show the current sprint
On the next page, you can name this filter, make it visible to all users and set it as the default board, so you don't have to select this filter each time.
Save this board as the default board
It will appear in the right sidebar under My agile boards.
09/30/2021 19/92 You can now drag and drop issues on your Agile board. You can also update items by right-clicking on them (Windows) or double-clicking on them (Mac).
Update issues directly from the Agile board
Story Points
Estimating stories in terms of hours can lead to unproductive discussions about the exact amount of time a story will take. Mike Cohn gives the example of two runners discussing how long a 5K run will take. For one it may be 25 minutes, whereas for someone else it may be 45 minutes. Everyone, however, can agree that a 5K run is much shorter than a marathon.
In a similar vein, story points let you move away from debating exactly how long a story will take and start talking about the relative investment for each story. In order to avoid points just being seen as hours, some teams use the Fibonacci sequence of 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, etc. Therefore, instead of arguing over whether a story is a 7 or an 8, you can quickly agree that it’s more of an 8 than a 5, but not a 13-pointer.
In Planio, you can switch on story points by going to Administration -> Agile Board and selecting Story Points as the estimate units.
Select Story Points as the estimate units
Then, select which trackers should use story points. For example, you could have a tracker called User Stories that is the only one that uses story points. Alternatively, you can use story points for all trackers.
Now, you’ll be able to assign story points to issues when you create them. You can display story points on cards on the Agile Board, and you can have story points as columns in the issue list. You'll also have story point burn-up and burn-down charts.
Agile Board with Story Points
Graphs, Graphs, Graphs!
Click on Add filter, select Sprint/Milestone and set it to the current sprint, so you can see the charts as they relate to the current sprint.
Burndown charts show you how a project is progressing. They highlight the impact of adding new feature requests, and they'll let you know if things
09/30/2021 20/92 aren't going according to plan.
Burndown Chart
The velocity chart shows you the output of a team per sprint.
Velocity Chart
Lead time is the time between an issue being opened and being closed. Teams using a Kanban approach often favor this method over the velocity chart, and they'll focus on improving the lead time rather than velocity.
Lead Time Chart
Cumulative flow shows how issues are 'flowing' through different statuses.
09/30/2021 21/92 Cumulative Flow Chart
Cumulative flow charts help answer questions such as:
1. Are issues reaching their final state? 2. Is there a particular status that's taking a lot of time? 3. How long does it take you to go from an idea to value? 4. Is the scope of the project changing over time?
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09/30/2021 22/92 Import contacts into Planio from CSV files
This is a guide on how you can import contacts and companies from Comma Separated Values (CSV) files using the importer in Planio. You'll be able to move data between different software packages easily.
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There are two steps to this process. First, you need to prepare a CSV file for import. Second, you have to carry out the import. We’ll cover both in this guide.
Preparing the CSV file
You need to export your contacts in the CSV format. Most contact databases provide one way or another to do so. If you're managing addresses using Excel sheets, you can create a CSV file by clicking on File -> Save As… and then selecting Comma Separated Values as the format from the drop-down menu.
Your CSV file can have the following headers. You’ll find a sample CSV file here: example.csv. Each row corresponds to a newly created contact.
Values Notes Company fields Name Enter the company name of a company, which is already stored within your Planio project. This field is optional. Alternatively, you may select a pre-existing company for all new contacts when configuring the import. Contact fields Gender/Salutation Use either m of f to indicate the person's gender. Alternatively provide commonly used salutations like "Mr." or "Mrs." First name Enter the contact's first name Last name This field contains the family name of the person. Email address(es) You may provide up to three separate columns of email addresses. Phone Number(s) Enter up to three phone/fax numbers. Enter the type of phone separately from the actual phone number. Planio knows the following kinds of phone numbers: "Work", "Home", "Mobile", "Work Fax", "Home Fax", "Pager", and "Other"
If you wish to create companies along side contacts, you can select "Create missing values". Then you'll be able to also import further information about the company.
Please note: When importing companies, the importer will not overwrite information within existing companies. If the imported attributes differ from previously stored values, a new company with the same name will be created instead. You may later merge these duplicates, if need be.
Importing the CSV File
Now, you have a CSV file ready for import. The next step is to import it into Planio. You’ll find the button for the Import in the top right corner on the overall contacts page.
Click on Import contacts in the top right
Then, select your CSV file using the file picker.
09/30/2021 23/92 Upload the CSV file using the file picker
On the next page, you can select options for importing the CSV File
Select the options for importing the CSV file based on how your CSV file is formatted
Option Notes Field separator You can select between comma separated values or semicolon separated values Field wrapper You can select between double quotes or single quotes. Encoding You can select the encoding for the CSV file Date format You can select one of five date formats (YYYY-MM-DD, DD/MM/YYYY, MM/DD/YYY, DD.MM.YYY or DD-MM-YYYY)
First you have to select a target project for the import. Then, you have to map the values from the CSV files to contact fields in Planio. You can select
09/30/2021 24/92 each value from the drop-down menu beside each attribute. You’ll also see a file content preview further down, so you can make sure you’re importing the right data.
Assign each column in the CSV file to a contact field
Once you’re done assigning the values to each field, you can click on import to start the import.
If you encounter any problems, you'll see a page with the errors and the import will not be carried out. You can restart the import once you've fixed the problems in the CSV file.
A list of the errors encountered during the import
If all goes well, you’ll see a list of the imported contacts.
You'll see a list of the created contacts.
That's how you can import companies and contacts into Planio using the CSV importer.
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09/30/2021 26/92 Import issues into Planio from CSV files
This is a guide on how you can import tasks, issues, tickets or stories from Comma Separated Values (CSV) files using the importer in Planio. You'll be able to move data between different software packages easily. For instance, you could plan a project in Microsoft Project, and then you could import all the tasks into Planio as issues.
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There are two steps to this process. First, you need to prepare a CSV file for import. Second, you have to carry out the import. We’ll cover both in this guide.
Preparing the CSV file
You need to export your tasks, issues or tickets in the CSV format. You can save most Excel sheets as CSV files by clicking on File -> Save As… and then selecting Comma Separated Values as the format from the drop-down menu.
Your CSV file can have the following headers. You’ll find a sample CSV file here: example.csv.
Values Notes Tracker The tracker of the issue. This is needs to map a name of an existing tracker in your project. You’ll find their names in Administration -> Trackers. If you don't provide this column within the CSV, you may select a tracker for all new issues during the import. Status The status of the issue. This is needs to map a name of an existing status available for the selected tracker. You’ll find their names in Administration -> Issue statuses. If you don't provide this column within the CSV, the default status will be used. Subject The subject of the issue. This is required Description Enter the text describing the issue. Priority Enter the name of one of the priorities listed in your Planio account. You’ll find their names in Administration -> Enumerations Category The category of the issue. New categories may created automatically during the import, if need be. Assignee Enter the First and Last Name, login or email of the person to whom you want to assign the issue. You’ll find those details in Administration -> Users. Make sure the person is a member of the project before assigning them issues via the importer. Sprint/Milestone Enter the name of the milestone or sprint to which the issue should be assigned. New sprints/milestones may be created automatically during the import, if need be. Private This selects whether the issue will be private for the assignee or not. Enter 1 to make the issue private or 0 otherwise. Start date Enter the start date in your preferred date format (e.g. MM/DD/YYYY or DD.MM.YYYY). Due date Enter the due date in your preferred date format (e.g. MM/DD/YYYY or DD.MM.YYYY). Estimated time Enter a number for the estimated number of hours (e.g. 15). % Done Enter a number for the percentage done (e.g. 27).
Please note: You may also import issue relations. This topic is covered below.
Importing the CSV File
Now, you have a CSV file ready for import. The next step is to import it into Planio. You’ll find the button for the Import on the issues page in the sidebar.
09/30/2021 27/92 Click on Import in the sidebar on the right
Then, select your CSV file using the file picker.
Upload the CSV file using the file picker
On the next page, you can select options for importing the CSV File
09/30/2021 28/92 Select the options for importing the CSV file based on how your CSV file is formatted
Option Notes Field separator You can select between comma separated values or semicolon separated values Field wrapper You can select between double quotes or single quotes. Encoding You can select the encoding for the CSV file Date format You can select one of five date formats (YYYY-MM-DD, DD/MM/YYYY, MM/DD/YYY, DD.MM.YYY or DD-MM-YYYY)
First you have to select a target project for the import. Then, you have to map the values from the CSV files to issue fields in Planio. You can select each value from the drop-down menu beside each attribute. You’ll also see a file content preview further down, so you can make sure you’re importing the right data.
09/30/2021 29/92 Assign each column in the CSV file to an issue field
Once you’re done assigning the values to each field, you can click on import to start the import.
If you encounter any issues, you'll see a page with the errors and the import will not be carried out. You can restart the import once you've fixed the problems in the CSV file.
A list of the errors encountered during the import
If all goes well, you’ll see a list of the imported issues.
09/30/2021 30/92 You'll see a list of the created issues.
That's how you can import tasks, issues, bugs or stories into Planio using the CSV importer.
Import issue relations
The issue import may also set up issue hierarchies as well as any other issue relation supported by Planio. You may store the relationship information in dedicated columns within your CSV file.
Issue hierarchies
Issue hierarchies may be specified via a parent issue column. Each issue may have exactly on parent issue. To reference already existing issues within your projects, you may use the issue number with a # in front, e.g. #13. To reference issues, which are part of the same CSV, you may either use the row number or you may specify a special "Unique ID" column, which contains the reference text.
Referencing existing issues
Subject Parent ID Rocket booster firmware upgrade #13 Attach booster to rocket #13
Issue #13 would have been created before the import.
Referencing new issues via row number
Subject Parent ID Install new rocket booster Rocket booster firmware upgrade 1 Attach booster to rocket 1
Please note, that numbering starts with the first non-header row.
Referencing new issues via Unique ID column
ID Subject Parent ID ROCKET-101 Install new rocket booster ROCKET-201 Rocket booster firmware upgrade ROCKET-101 ROCKET-202 Attach booster to rocket ROCKET-101
Please be aware, that the unique ID may not start with a # sign. Otherwise it would be mistaken for a reference to an existing issue.
Issue relations
Planio supports the following issue relations:
Related to Duplicates / Duplicated by Blocks / Blocked by Copied to / Copied from
09/30/2021 31/92 Precedes / Follows
Each issue may be part of many relations, although there are logical restrictions, e.g. an issue cannot block a preceding task. Each relation type should be presented in a different column within the CSV. You may reference other issues using the same three techniques mentioned above. Multiple relations of the same type should be separated by comma.
Please be aware, when using a dedicated Unique ID column, that said ID may not contain commas, since that is used as a separator.
For the follows and precedes relation, you may also add the delay incorporated.
Example defining relations with delay
ID Subject Blocked by Follows ROCKET-201 Rocket booster firmware upgrade ROCKET-202 Paint rocket red ROCKET-203 Attach booster to rocket ROCKET-201 ROCKET-202 2d
The booster may only be attached after the firmware was upgraded and after the paint dried for two day.
Importing the CSV file
Follow the steps described above. When mapping the values from the CSV files to issue fields in Planio, you may also define, which CSV column contains defines which issue relation. When selecting a column for Unique ID, it is assumed, that you're using these value to reference other issues. If that mapping is left blank, it is assumed that row numbers are used.
Assign CSV columns to relationship types
The rest of the import works as described above.
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09/30/2021 32/92 Import Planio Backup into Redmine
Set up Redmine
Download the latest stable version of Redmine: http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/Download Set up Redmine according to http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineInstall and point it to a fresh, empty MySQL database Make sure this plain and empty Redmine installation works.
Use the working Redmine installation with your Planio data
The Backup you can download from your Planio account contains a MySQL database dump, import that into another MySQL DB. Change the database connection settings of your Redmine to point to this database. The Planio backup also contains all the attachment data, move that to the files directory inside your Redmine installation. Uploads are segmented by year and month, the resulting folder structure should look like that: redmine_directory/files/yyyy/mm/. Upgrade the database scheme to account for the new Redmine version http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineUpgrade#Step-4-Update-the-database
Set up open source plugins (optional)
Planio comes with Agile and Checklist plugins pre-installed. We provide the Pro versions, but the Free versions will work as well (minus the pro-only features). Simply install these into the plugins directory of your Redmine setup if you want to continue using them. Install required ruby libraries for the plugins (repeat the bundle install command from the initial setup) Upgrade the database scheme to account for updates in the plugins compared to the versions Planio runs (again, see http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/RedmineUpgrade#Step-4-Update-the-database)
At this point you should have a working Redmine with your Planio data and optional Agile and Checklists plugins.
Things you will lose when moving away from Planio
The following modules are developed in-house by us and are only available to Planio customers:
Help Desk Storage Chat
All corresponding data is included in the DB dump and files directory but lacking the plugins it will simply be ignored by your Redmine installation.
Troubleshooting
Delete custom field definitions for Planio data types
If you had been using custom fields for entities provided by proprietary Planio plugins (such as Help Desk or Storage), you will have to delete these as otherwise Redmine will not work properly.
DELETE custom_fields, custom_field_enumerations, custom_fields_projects, custom_fields_roles, custom_fields_tracker s, custom_values FROM custom_fields LEFT JOIN custom_field_enumerations ON custom_field_enumerations.custom_field_id = custom_fields.id LEFT JOIN custom_fields_projects ON custom_fields_projects.custom_field_id = custom_fields.id LEFT JOIN custom_fields_roles ON custom_fields_roles.custom_field_id = custom_fields.id LEFT JOIN custom_fields_trackers ON custom_fields_trackers.custom_field_id = custom_fields.id LEFT JOIN custom_values ON custom_values.custom_field_id = custom_fields.id WHERE custom_fields.type IN ('CompanyCustomField', 'ContactCustomField', 'StorageFolderCustomField', ' StorageFileCustomField');
09/30/2021 33/92 Import time entries into Planio from CSV files
You probably know, that you may book time on issues or projects via Planio Time Tracking. However, if you've decided to track your time outside of Planio, it's also possible to import your time entries from Comma Separated Values (CSV) files using the importer in Planio.
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There are two steps to this process. First, you need to prepare a CSV file for import. Second, you have to carry out the import. We’ll cover both in this guide.
Preparing the CSV file
You need to export your time entries or time bookings in the CSV format. You can save most Excel sheets as CSV files by clicking on File -> Save As… and then selecting Comma Separated Values as the format from the drop-down menu.
Your CSV file can have the following headers. You’ll find a sample CSV file here: example.csv.
Values Notes Activity This field is used to determine the kind of This field is optional. Alternatively, you may activity. This should map to an existing activity select a fixed activity for all new time entries and it needs to be enabled within the target when configuring the import. project. You’ll find their names in Project page -> Settings -> Activities. Issue A time entry may belong to a single issue. Fill This field is optional. If left blank, the time entry this column with the issue ID (e.g. 4711). will be associated with the overall project. Date Enter the date in your preferred date format This field is mandatory. (e.g. MM/DD/YYYY or DD.MM.YYYY). Hours Enter a number for the spent time in hours (e.g. This field is mandatory. 15). Comment Enter a comment describing the work. This field is optional.
Importing the CSV File
Now, you have a CSV file ready for import. The next step is to import it into Planio. You’ll find the button for the Import on the spent time page in the sidebar.
Click on Import in the sidebar on the right
Then, select your CSV file using the file picker.
Upload the CSV file using the file picker
09/30/2021 34/92 On the next page, you can select options for importing the CSV File
Select the options for importing the CSV file based on how your CSV file is formatted
Option Notes Field separator You can select between comma separated values or semicolon separated values Field wrapper You can select between double quotes or single quotes. Encoding You can select the encoding for the CSV file Date format You can select one of five date formats (YYYY-MM-DD, DD/MM/YYYY, MM/DD/YYY, DD.MM.YYY or DD-MM-YYYY)
First you have to select a target project for the import. Then, you have to map the values from the CSV files to time entry fields in Planio. You can select each value from the drop-down menu beside each attribute. You’ll also see a file content preview further down, so you can make sure you’re importing the right data.
09/30/2021 35/92 Assign each column in the CSV file to a time entry field
Once you’re done assigning the values to each field, you can click on import to start the import.
If you encounter any problems, you'll see a page with the errors and the import will not be carried out. You can restart the import once you've fixed the problems in the CSV file.
A list of the errors encountered during the import
If all goes well, you’ll see a list of the imported time entries.
You'll see a list of the created time entries.
09/30/2021 36/92 That's how you can import time entries or time bookings into Planio using the CSV importer.
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09/30/2021 37/92 Learn all about issues
Let's have a look at how to create new issues and introduce the different fields you’ll encounter when creating one.
Issues can be comprised of much more than their four required fields (tracker, subject, status and priority); in fact, there are a ton of useful fields that can really bring your Planio issues to life.
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Issue fields
Let’s explore issues by walking through the process of creating a new issue.
Please note that based on your role and the enabled modules in your project not all of the shown fields may be available.
The basics: tracker, private, subject, and description
Basic issue fields
In the Tracker field, select the most appropriate issue tracker category (learn more about trackers here). In the Private field, select the check box to indicate that the issue is a private issue. Based on role permissions, a private issue will not be visible to other users, though they may see other issues within the same project. In the Subject field, enter a brief yet meaningful subject title for the issue. In the Description field, describe the nature of the issue. You can use the formatting buttons at the top to add basic formatting. To learn more about Planio's default formatting language Textile, click the small Help icon.
Planning and project related fields
Fields related to planning and projects
In the Status field, select the current status of the new issue. In the Priority field, select the relative importance of the issue in terms of its priority with other issues. In the Assignee field, select the person to whom the issue should be assigned. The assignee, like a watcher (see below), receives e-mail notifications when an update to the issue occurs. In the Category field, select the relevant category for this issue. If you'd like to create a new category, click on the small + icon next to it. In the Target milestone field, select a milestone. Milestones will be displayed alongside their issues on the roadmap of your project. To create a new milestone, click on the + icon next to it. In the Parent task field, enter a task/issue number or enter keyword text of a task that is a parent to your task - Planio will actively display all tasks that match your text. Click the parent task when it appears. In the Start date field, enter the date when the issue should begin in yyyy-mm-dd format or click the icon to launch the mini-calendar. In the Due date field, enter the date when the issue is due in yyyy-mm-dd format or click the icon to launch the mini-calendar. In the Estimated time field, enter the number of hours to be allocated to the issue. In the % Done field, select the current percentile value of the issue’s completion rate.
Please note that if you don't have issue categories or milestones yet, the fields will not be shown. You can create them within your project Settings.
Customer related fields
09/30/2021 38/92 Planio lets you work together with your customers even when they haven't got their own user account. If an issue is associated with a customer company and contact, you can optionally send issue updates to your customers via e-mail. Their response will automatically update the respective issue in Planio. Both companies and contacts can be managed in the Customers tab within your project.
Fields for customer companies and contacts
In the Customer company field, enter the name of an existing company - Planio will actively display all companies that match the name. Click the company when it appears. In the Customer contact field, select the name of the contact within the company who is associated with the issue. In the Additional customer contacts field, you can add additional contacts from within the customer company that should receive issue updates in CC. Simply enter names or e-mail addresses - Planio will select or create contacts automatically for you. You can add as many additional contacts as you like, to add a new line, simply click on Add contact.
Files and watchers
Fields for file attachments and watchers
In the Files field, click Choose Files to launch the file upload tool. This field is used to attach files that are relevant to the issue. Alternatively, you can simply drag and drop files from your computer onto the issue form to attach them. In the Watchers field, select the check box(es) to indicate other people within the project team who should be kept aware of the issue via e-mail notifications. Users that aren't shown can be added by clicking on Search for watchers to add.
Finalizing your issue
Click Create to finalize the issue and view its details; or, Click Create and continue to finalise the issue and create an additional issue; or, Click Preview to view the appearance of the issue’s description (very useful if you have included wiki syntax text in your description).
Do you think your colleagues might be overwhelmed with all those issue fields and options? Learn how to strip down your Planio to a productive bare minimum.
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09/30/2021 39/92 Make Redmine Projects Public on Planio
Planio is powered by Redmine and as such it offers the same great possibilities to make Redmine projects public on the Internet. You can choose whether your projects should be accessible to anyone – without the need to login – or whether you'd like visitors to sign up first and leave their email address. You can also choose to manually confirm signups or confirm them automatically by sending an activation link in an email.
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What are Public Projects used for?
Making your projects public is a great way to provide a help desk for your customers. Allow them to view FAQs or tutorial guides in the wiki (like we do at Planio) or let them sign up to discuss in forums or create issues.
Public projects in Planio are also great for collaboration on Open Source projects, for instance. You could also use it to host public Git or Subversion Repositories.
Sounds fun? Follow this guide to learn how it's done.
How to Make a Project Public?
A public project on on your Planio powered Redmine account is essentially that: An open project that is available to the public.
Normally, only the explicitly named members of a project in Planio can access it and outsiders cannot see what's going on.
Let's change that! Here's how:
1. Find your project or create a new one 2. Navigate to Settings -> Information in your project 3. Check the box next to the Public label and click Save
Make projects public on Redmine by Planio
Congratulations! You now have a public project.
Optional: Make all Projects Public by Default
Would you like to make all projects public by default? No problem:
1. Navigate to your avatar -> Administration -> Settings -> Projects 2. Check New projects are public by default 3. Click Save
Optional: Allow Anonymous Access From the Web
09/30/2021 40/92 Public projects are open to all users in your Planio account. But you can take this a step further and allow access to people who have not even logged in. This will publish your public projects on the Web, making your content accessible to anyone and also allow search engines to index it.
Here's how:
1. Navigate to your avatar -> Administration -> Settings -> Authentication 2. Uncheck Authentication required 3. Click Save
Uncheck "Authentication required" to allow anyone in
Be careful though with this option. You should not have any secrets in your public projects now – the whole World will be able to see them!
Next, we'll learn how exactly these changes impact your projects and who will be able to see and do what.
The Non-Member & Anonymous Roles
Now that you've made your project public, let's see how this changes the access permissions to it.
Please navigate to your avatar -> Administration -> Roles and Permissions for a moment. You'll see two special roles in addition to your own individual roles which you can define yourself:
Non-Member and Anonymous Roles
The Non-Member Role
Click on the Non-Member role to pull up its permissions. What you configure here will govern what any user in your Planio account will be allowed to see and do in your public projects.
Specifically, this means that you won't have to add users to this public project anymore to give them access to it. Any user who does not have a specific role in the project automatically gets the permissions set in the Non-Member role. Users who are members in a public project will have all permissions from both the Non-Member role and their explicit membership roles combined.
09/30/2021 41/92 Permissions of the Non-Member role
The Anonymous Role
The Anonymous role is only relevant to you if you unchecked the Authentication required checkbox above. Similar to how the Non-Member role defines what logged in users can see or do, the Anonymous role specifies what anonymous users – who are not even logged in – can see or do.
We generally recommend to only give view permissions to the Anonymous role. Commenting or even creating content should only be done by logged in users.
We'll learn how to ask users to register for an account in a minute. Read on!
Individually Adding Anonymous and Non-Members to Projects
If using the Anonymous and Non-Member roles isn't specific enough for your use case and if you would like anonymous users or non-members to have different permissions in different projects, you can also add Anonymous and Non-Member as if they were real users – using the regular roles.
Let's take a look:
1. Go to your public project 2. Navigate to Settings -> Members 3. Click on New member
09/30/2021 42/92 Add non-member users as if they were staff
You'll find Anonymous and Non-Member among the list of regular users and groups. Now, you could add your Non-Member group with a role of Staff for instance. The result would be that non-members will be able to see and do exactly the same as normal members with a role of Staff.
It's quite advanced, we agree. In most cases it will be sufficient to configure your Non-Member and Anonymous roles' permissions.
User Self-Registration
Earlier we said that it's recommended to only allow view permissions to anonymous users – you most probably don't want to end up receiving spam comments on your Planio without even knowing who posted them!
In this section, we'll show you how anonymous users can register for an account on your Planio using their email address.
Activation Options
Let's set some settings first. Please navigate to your avatar -> Administration -> Settings -> Authentication. You'll be presented with a screen like this:
Defining options for self-registration and activation
09/30/2021 43/92 Let's take a look at the options for the Self-registration setting:
Account activation by email will allow anonymous users to sign up using their email address. They will receive an email with an activation link. Once they've clicked it, they will be active users in your Planio account. Manual account activation will also allow sign ups but instead of sending activation emails, it will notify all administrators in your Planio account and you will have to activate the new users manually before they can login. Automatic account activation will allow anyone to sign up for a new account. New user accounts will be active immediately without any activation checks via email or by an admin. Disabled means that new users in your Planio account have to be added by admins – this is the default.
We recommend to use account activation by email or manual account activation depending on your personal preference.
Once registered, your new users won't have project memberships yet, so make sure to configure your Non-Member role. For example, you could allow anonymous users to view blog posts and non-member users to comment on them.
Conversion Optimization
Once self-registration is enabled on your account, anonymous users will find a menu item called Registration within the avatar menu on the top right.
But if you really want to build a community and encourage participation in your Planio account, that may not be enough.
You might want to check out these two options in your avatar -> Administration -> Settings -> Authentication:
Enable registration call to action will display registration links to anonymous users in various places where they would be able to participate if they were registered. For example, if non-members are allowed to create new issues, anonymous users will see a link saying Please register to add an issue right on the issues list.
Registration CTA for creating issues Show custom fields on registration will – when disabled – hide any extra custom fields on the registration form for your Planio account to make sign ups easier on new users by not asking too much information upfront. They can always fill out these fields later after registration.
Make Your Public Planio Your Own
Next up, we'll learn how to customize your user's experience with your Planio account. Here's how to make them feel right at home:
Title and Welcome Text
Please navigate to your avatar -> Administration -> Settings -> General. Here, you can set an Application title – e.g. company name – and a Welcome text. Welcome texts allow for regular wiki markup, so you can use formatting options and even embed your company logo.
Below you'll see a customized welcome page as it's shown to anonymous users:
09/30/2021 44/92 Welcome page for anonymous users
Blog Posts
You can also write blog posts within your public Planio projects and assign the View blog permission to your Anonymous role. They will be shown on your public Planio account and users will even be able to subscribe to them using their feed readers.
Git and Subversion Repositories
If you work on an Open Source project with Planio, you can easily publish your Git or Subversion repository to the Web as well. Simply grant the Browse repository and/or View changesets permissions to your Anonymous role and anyone will be able to clone or check out your repo using its HTTPS URL.
Public Git repository with HTTPS access on Planio
There are numerous other possibilities within the features of Planio. Just check out the Apps in your project and the permissions you can grant your roles.
Paid extras: Your own Design and Domain
If you'd like to take things even further, you can get your Planio account re-designed using your own logo and colors and we also offer the possibility to run your Planio account on your own Internet domain.
Both extras are included for free within our Enterprise plan and are available for 15 Euro* per month each (+ 100 Euro* setup for the design) in all other plans. Get in touch with us to activate these extras for your account.
*) Prices are subject to VAT depending on where you are based.
Popular examples
09/30/2021 45/92 Need some examples? Here are some Planio accounts that use public projects:
Saxonica – Development for the Saxon processor for XSLT, XQuery, and XML Schema Pulp – A software package managing platform called Pulp, run by Red Hat Open Source and Linux Lab – A community of computer scientists and software developers called OSLL Planio Support — Our own Planio account which we use for customer support, of course
Want to add your Planio account to the list? Get in touch and we'll list it here!
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09/30/2021 46/92 Set up your Help Desk App in 8 minutes
Planio Help Desk will help you provide better customer service. It brings all your customer interactions into one place, so you'll keep an overview on all support questions.
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What can Planio Help Desk do for you?
1. You can work on customer questions at one central location, so your entire team can work together to give answers to customers’ questions. 2. You’ll be able to answer customers faster, thanks to templated responses to commonly asked questions, auto-replies and automatic personalization. 3. You can ensure that customers always get consistent answers to the same questions. 4. You can reduce the amount of support emails using FAQs 5. Customers will be happier because they’ll be able to track the progress of their issues. 6. It's tightly integrated with email, so your customers can use email to talk with you, but every email appears as an issue in Planio. 7. Best of all, your support team can work with customers from anywhere in the world.
Create a project for Help Desk
Sign into your Planio account and create a project for customer support.
We recommend that you create a project just for customer support. If you provide support in several languages, it's best to create a separate project for each language.
Activate the Help Desk App
Go to Apps tab and install the Help Desk app if it isn’t already installed.
Install the Help Desk app
Once the Help Desk App is installed, we need to set up the support email address.
Go to the Settings tab, and click on Inbox. When you follow Add email address you can enter your support email address in the Address field. It can be any email address you own. For example, at Planio we use support (at) plan.io.
09/30/2021 47/92 Pick your preferred email address
Now, you have to set up email forwarding for this address. Any emails sent to the address in this box need to forward to the unique Planio Inbox email address, which you'll see just below the "From email address" field.
Here are links to tutorials on how to do this for GSuite (formerly Google Apps) and some of the big domain registrars such as Godaddy or ENOM:
1. GSuite 2. Godaddy 3. ENOM 4. Hover 5. 1&1
It can take a few minutes once you’ve set up the email forwarding before it's active.
Finally, after the forwarding was confirmed successfully, you may activate your new address for use in Help Desk.
The address is now confirmed and activated for Help Desk
Send an email to the support email address
Now, you can send an email to the support email address, and it will show up as an issue in the support project.
The email appears as an issue in the Issues view
You can see the issue by clicking on the Issues tab. The subject line is set as the subject, and the body of the email is set as the description.
09/30/2021 48/92 The email in the issue view
If customers use an email address that isn’t saved in Planio, that email address will be added as a new customer in the Contacts tab, so you’ll be able to track all correspondence with that person. This means you can manage all customer relations from within Planio automatically.
Planio also sends an automatic email confirming receipt of the email to the customer.
Start replying to customers' emails
Click Edit and scroll down to the Notes section. Select the External notes option, and write your email.
Reply to customers emails directly in Planio
You don’t have to write "Hi Jack" or conclude the email. Those parts are automatically included via header and footer templates. We’ll see how we can update them below.
Click Submit to send the response to the customer.
They’ll receive an email with your message along with a greeting and an email signature. An added bonus is that your customer will have a tracking link, so they can track the progress of the request. This is particularly useful if the issue can’t be resolved right away. For instance, you could keep them updated, and they can see the various updates all on one page.
Give your emails your own touch and save time with templates
Now, let’s dive into the more advanced features of the Planio Help Desk.
Click on the Settings tab and then on the Help Desk tab.
09/30/2021 49/92 The Help Desk templates are on the right
You’ll see the Outgoing emails section on the right. Here, you can update the existing templates for the header and footer. For example, let’s update the footer. Click on Edit footer below it.
You’ll see “Best regards”, and the current_user.name inside of curly brackets.
Customize your headers and footers
This means that the name here will depend on the person answering. You can make any changes you want to the text, and there is a list of variables you can choose from. For example, you could put the project name after the name. You can also use the variables {{faqs.top1_question}}, {{faqs.top1_uri}}, and so on to include links to the most commonly asked questions.
You can also create answer templates to frequently asked questions. You'll be able to access these templates in a dropdown menu when you're replying to customers in the issues section. These will appear in a dropdown menu when you’re replying to customer emails.
Start an FAQ section, so customers can find answers, faster
Within the Help Desk templates and FAQs project settings, you may create and edit internal templates as well as publicly visible FAQ entries. With their help your customers can quickly find answers to commonly asked questions themselves. You can also include a link to your top most commonly asked questions in the email sent automatically when customers submit a support request.
09/30/2021 50/92 Create your own FAQ section based on Help Desk Templates
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09/30/2021 51/92 Store Website Chat Logs from Userlike in Planio Help Desk
Using Userlike for chatting live with your website visitors is great, and it's an awesome way to provide support or explain your product.
Normally, Userlike sends you an email after each chat session with a chat log, so you can keep it for future reference.
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We thought it would be great to store these chat logs in Planio Help Desk as issues instead, so you'll have everything neatly organized by contact and so you'll be able to see support issues from Planio side-by-side with Userlike chats.
Setting it up is really easy:
Set up Planio Help Desk
If you haven't already, set up Planio Help Desk in one of your projects. We have an in-depth guide about how to set up Planio Help Desk, but if you want to get started quickly, just do the following:
1. Navigate to your project 2. Click on the Apps tab 3. Find Planio Help Desk 4. Click Install
Install Planio Help Desk
Configure an API end point in Userlike
Next, we'll log in to Userlike. You'll need your Userlike username and password for this. Once logged in, we are going to:
1. Find Config in the left hand menu 2. Click on Addons Settings 3. Find an entry called API in the table 4. Click on its small Edit icon on the far right
09/30/2021 52/92 Configure an API end point in Userlike
You'll be presented with a configuration form. We'll get to that in a minute.
Let's figure our your Callback URL first!
Constructing the Userlike Callback URL
This part gets a little technical. But don't worry – we'll get through this.
Generally speaking, the Callback URL needs to follow this format: https://acme.plan.io/projects/support/userlike_callback?key=abc123
The URL needs to be adapted to fit your particular Planio account though, so let's take a closer look:
https://acme.plan.io/projects/support is the full URL to the designated project where you activated Planio Help Desk. You can copy it from your browser's address bar when you're on the Overview tab of your project. acme.plan.io is your Planio domain and support is the project's Identifier. /userlike_callback instructs Planio that this call is coming from Userlike, it does not need to be changed ?key=abc123 is a secret key for authentication purposes. In Planio, please navigate to your avatar -> Administration -> Settings -> Incoming emails and find the key in the field labeled Incoming email WS API key. Now, replace abc123 in your URL with your actual key.
That's it. Now, paste your URL in the corresponding field on Userlike and select one or two of the Automatic Tickets boxes:
Select for Offline Messages if you would like to receive messages in Planio when you're offline in Userlike Chat and a website visitor leaves a message. Select for Chats if you would like to receive actual chat logs with your website visitors in Planio.
Our recommendation is to select both checkboxes. Here's what it should look like:
Userlike Callback API form
Please leave all other checkboxes unchecked and finally, click on Update settings.
And that's it! You can go ahead and try it out now. Any chats and/or messages from Userlike will show up as issues in Planio Help Desk.
Advanced Callback URL Tricks
Of course, we have some more advanced config options for you if you think building the URL above was fun!
You can add any of the following parameters to your Callback URL to further configure how Planio issues will be created. Please add each parameter as &key=value to your URL and replace key and value appropriately.
09/30/2021 53/92 Key Value status_chat_meta The name of a Planio issue status to be set on the issue for chat logs. If you merely want to archive chat logs to have them available in your customer history and in search, you could select a Closed status here. category_chat_meta The name of a Planio issue category to be set on the issue for chat logs, for instance Userlike Chat. status_offline_message The name of a Planio issue status to be set on the issue for messages you've received in Userlike while offline. Use an Open status like New or In Progress here, you'll be also able to respond to messages right from within Planio Help Desk! category_offline_message The name of a Planio issue category to be set on the issue for offline messages, for instance Userlike Message.
Here's a fully-fledged example: https://acme.plan.io/projects/support/userlike_callback?key=abc123&status_chat_meta=Closed&category_chat_meta= Userlike%20Chat&status_offline_message=Open&category_offline_message=Userlike%20Message
(Line breaks are only there to make it more legible.)
This URL will instruct Planio to:
create issues for the Planio account at acme.plan.io, in a project with the identifier support, with a key of abc123, with a Status of Closed and a Category of Userlike Chat for chat logs, and with a Status of Open and a Category of Userlike Message for offline messages.
That's it! Have any questions? Get in touch with us – we'll be happy to help set up the Userlike integration with you!
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09/30/2021 54/92 Synchronize Files using Planio Storage
Planio Storage lets you set up a dedicated folder within any Planio project that will be synchronized across your team. All team members can access files using the web or directly on their devices using the Planio Storage Sync Client.
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Install Planio Storage
Within any project, install Planio Storage by navigating to the Apps tab. Depending on your current Planio plan, you might have to add Planio Storage for a small monthly fee. Of course, you'll be able to try Planio Storage for free until your next plan renewal.
Install Planio Storage
Install the Sync Client
To sync your project's files and folders with your computer, download the appropriate client app first.
macOS Download Windows Download Linux Download (Version 2.6.3) (Version 2.6.3) (Version 2.3.4)
Next, run the installer and enter your Planio domain, login and password. Planio Storage will allow you to sync everything from your Planio account or just the projects you select.
You can also specify the local folder where Planio Storage files should be placed.
09/30/2021 55/92 Setting up the Planio Storage client app
Handling files and folders inside the synced folders works like you're used to and every change will be synced with Planio. Should you be offline during a change, the sync will happen the next time your device is connected to the Internet.
In case you and a colleague edit the same file while offline or during syncs, Planio Storage will create a copy of the file and you'll be able to merge your changes.
Browser access
You can manage files and folders right in Planio as well. Within your project, navigate to the Storage tab. Inside, you'll be able to upload any number of files from your computer by clicking on the Upload files button or simply by dragging them from your desktop into the browser window.
You can also create folders as you would on your computer by clicking New folder.
To visualize the files and folders in Planio Storage, you can either select Tree or Grid from the options menu at the top right.
09/30/2021 56/92 Planio Storage tree view
WebDAV access
In case you don't wish to synchronize everything but access Planio Storage directly while online, you can use WebDAV.
You can find a project's WebDAV URL in the Storage section's sidebar on the right. To connect, simply use your Planio login and password.
Accessing Planio Storage using WebDAV
Configure roles and permissions
To configure who among your colleagues and clients should be able to view and edit files, head to your avatar -> Administration -> Roles and Permissions. Then, select a role. Within Permissions -> Storage, you'll be able to set permissions for the selected role.
Managing Planio Storage permissions
The following permissions are available:
View files and folders Enables users to access the Storage tab and browse files. Edit files and folders Lets users upload, edit, and delete files. Edit protected files and folders Enables users to protect files and folders. Protected items are hidden from other users unless they have the View protected files and folders permission. View protected files and folders Allows users to view and download protected files. They cannot edit, delete, or set files to unprotected. Share files Allows users to generate a sharing link for any file. View shared files Allows users to download files shared using a sharing link.
Protecting files and folders
Files and folders can be protected and thus hidden from other users. To protect a folder or file, click on the ... menu or right click the item. Then, select Protect.
09/30/2021 57/92 Protect a folder in Planio Storage
Protected files and folders are hidden from users who do not have the View protected files and folders permission. Users who do have the permission can view and download protected items, but they cannot edit or delete them.
To edit, delete, or unprotect protected files and folders, users need the Edit protected files and folders permission.
Sharing files
Single files can be shared with people outside of the project by generating a Sharing link. This is useful if you'd like to link to the file publicly or send a link to it in an email.
To share a file, click on the ... menu or right click the item. Then, select Share. You'll be able to copy the sharing link in the next step.
Sharing link information in Planio Storage sidebar
The link will always point to the latest version of the file–even if it has been updated after it was shared.
Sharing links can be accessed by anyone who has the View shared files permission. By configuring your Non-member and Anonymous roles, you can define if that extends to everyone who has an account in your Planio or even to people who are not logged in. Our guide Make Redmine Projects Public on Planio has more information about this.
Linking files
You can create links in Planio Storage which point to files in different folders or even projects of your Planio account.
To create a link, click on the ... menu or right click the item. Then, select Create link. In the popup that appears, select the project and folder where the link should be created.
09/30/2021 58/92 Creating a link in Planio Storage
Links will always point to the latest version of the source file. If a source file is deleted, all links will disappear as well.
Users will always require permissions to view the source file as well in order to be able to view the link.
Handling conflicts
The Planio Storage desktop client uploads local changes and downloads remote changes. When a file has changed both in your local folder and on the Planio server between two synchronization runs, the client will be unable to resolve the situation on its own. Therefore, it will create a conflict file which contains your local version, download the remote version from Planio, and notify you that a conflict has occurred which needs attention.
Example
Imagine there is a file called hello.txt in your synchronized folder. It has not changed for a while and contains the text "hello" both on your PC and remotely, on the Planio server. Now, nearly at the same time you update this file to say "local hello", the file on the Planio server gets updated to contain "planio hello" by someone else.
When attempting to upload your local changes, the desktop client will notice that the server version also has changed. It therefore stops the upload (since it would potentially overwrite somebody elses changes) and instead creates a conflict file holding your local changes. You will now have two files on your local machine:
hello.txt containing "planio hello" hello (conflicted copy 2020-06-03 012755).txt containing "local hello"
As you can see, the file hello.txt represents the file as it is currently on the Planio server - it has the remote changes (and will continue to be updated with further remote changes when they happen), but your local adjustments have not been uploaded to the server. Instead, the conflicted copy file holds your local adjustments now.
The desktop client notifies you about this situation via system notifications, the system tray icon and a yellow unresolved conflicts badge in the account settings window. Clicking this badge shows a list that includes the unresolved conflicts and clicking any one of them opens an explorer window pointing at the relevant file.
To resolve such a conflict, open both files, compare the differences and copy your local changes from the conflicted copy file into the original file where applicable. In this example you might change hello.txt to say "local and planio hello" and delete the file with conflicted copy in its name. With that, the conflict is resolved.
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09/30/2021 60/92 The Product Manager’s Guide to Planio
This guide will bring you through exactly how we use Planio ourselves internally for product management. The reason is that everyone does product management slightly differently, so we didn’t want to give a “one-size-fits-all” guide. Instead, you’ll get some ideas from how we do it that you can adapt to your own situation.
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Let’s take a second to consider the product management environment at Planio. We have a mature product that’s been around for over 8 years. Thousands of organizations worldwide use Planio on a daily basis. We’re constantly adding new features, refining existing ones, improving our codebase and fixing security issues as they arise.
But we have an interesting twist in our product management. Planio is based on open-source Redmine, so product decisions made by the open source community impact our product roadmap. In short, we maintain Planio as a long-lived fork of the Redmine project that remains compatible with Redmine.
In this guide, we’ll take an example of a product launch that we had last year. We rolled out an Android and iOS app for Planio. We’ll dig into how we used Planio as our product management tool.
Task-Level Work as Planio Issues
Issues in Planio are the atomic unit for organization in Planio. You can think of them as work packages, user stories or tasks. In our case, a developer created an issue for individual stories. Then, he’d update the issue with notes based on his progress. He might link to related issues in the case of a specific bug. He often included references to any Git commits that were relevant to the issue.
Here’s what that looks like:
Issue in Planio with related tasks and associated revisions
As you can see above, the beauty of Planio issues in this case is that you have a clear overview in one place. You can see any blockers that need to be resolved. You can jump right to any related information with a single click instead of trying to search for it.
For example, in this case, you can click on Revision 77fb4ea8, and you can dive right into the diff for the associated code:
09/30/2021 61/92 Repository diff viewer
Understanding Issues in Context
As a product manager, you don’t just operate at the task level. You need to be able to zoom out to see the bigger picture. Perhaps you need to give a report to the executives in the C-suite on product. Or you need to sit down with sales and give them insights into where the product is going over the next couple of sprints.
In our example product, we used Milestones as our project management approach. Our Milestones were target releases for the mobile app. Here’s an example of the v2.0 of the mobile app:
The overview for the v2.0 milestone
So, in the screenshot, you can see an overview of all the issues that go into the milestone. In this example, you can see that the majority of the issues are focused on solving bugs. You can see at a glance that this milestone is at 100% completion.
Working with Agile Boards
As a product manager, you’ll often be using an agile framework such as Scrum or Kanban. In the above project, we didn’t strictly follow a framework such as Scrum, but let’s go through the Agile approach you could use on such a project.
The Agile board will be your daily tool for visualizing progress and communicating the status of individual stories. You’ll have an overview of issues that haven’t been started yet, issues that are in progress and issues that are done. You can use swimlanes to break the board down by individual team members. Here’s an example:
09/30/2021 62/92 The Agile board with swimlanes for each team member
The swimlanes are great for seeing whether one team member is overloaded with too much work.
In the Scrum approach, for example, you’ll often use burn-down charts to give you a sense of how well a team is performing on a particular sprint. Here’s an example of the burn-down chart for the milestone we looked at previously:
The burndown chart for the v2.0 milestone
This chart gives you insights into how you’re doing. You can see that this sprint pretty much tracked the ideal burn-down rate. New issues were only added once, so there wasn’t much unexpected work added on. Based on that chart, we can say that the sprint went very well indeed!
Strategic Product Management
So far, we’ve focused on how we use the task-level features in Planio for product management. The tactical task-level work is a big part of product management. You’ll spend a lot of time deciding which stories go into the next sprint, or you’ll be estimating story sizes and helping team members get through barriers and blockers to finish specific sprint items.
But there’s more to product management than Agile boards and issues. You’ll also need to spend time understanding the market. You’ll do competitor reviews. You’ll track feature requests. You’ll sit down to interview people as part of your research into your users.
Wikis and Planio Storage
In our experience, all these insights and findings get lost in a sea of Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, emails and scraps of paper. The problem is that your team won’t have a clear understanding of all this information, and you’ll find that you aren’t on the same page when discussing the product. You might have had a breakthrough from talking to customers, but if your team doesn’t understand that breakthrough, they might not understand the decisions you want to make on that basis.
At Planio we use the Wiki and Planio Storage for sharing strategic information.
Planio Storage is a synced folder on your desktop that you can use to store relevant files. For example, you could store a PowerPoint presentation that you gave to senior management, and everyone on your team will have access to it.
We use the wiki for storing more refined information, whereas Storage is more a collection of documents. For example, you could store your product vision, your key insights from user testing and your key ideas driving your product in your wiki.
Here’s an example from one of our wikis that contains insights from customer interviews we held at Planio:
09/30/2021 63/92 A wiki page listing user interviews
The fact that this information is in the wiki in a structured format means that everyone in your organization from sales to customer support can find and learn from the insights and ideas of others. It’s also great when you’re onboarding new team members. They can learn much of the implicit knowledge of the organization by reading through the wiki.
Operations and Customer Support in Planio
Some organizations suffer from operations, product management and customer support being siloed functions within the organization. Customer service uses a help desk tool that is separate to operation’s task management tool which is separate to product management’s tools.
So, a customer sends an email requesting a custom feature that customer support forwards to operations that forwards to the product team, which adds it as a backlog item.
The glue holding all of this together ends up being email, and nobody can quite find out what exactly the customer wanted to achieve from that customization.
We use Planio to handle all of these functions, and we’ve found that it’s amazing to have all this information in one system.
Planio Help Desk
We use the Help Desk to handle customer support requests, and we can reference a specific customer request in a backlog item in the product project.
We can also quickly get insights from customer support that feed back into our product decisions. For example, we ask new trial accounts why they decided to try Planio and what they’re looking for in it. Here's what the email looks like:
09/30/2021 64/92 The email asking Planio users why they signed up
We can use the filters on the issue page to quickly dig down and get a list of hundreds of responses to our “Quick question” email:
A filter showing responses to the "Quick question" email
We also ask people why they canceled their Planio account. We’ve created a wiki page listing the reasons and tallying up the totals, so we know the biggest drivers from cancellations. We also link back to each email with the reason, so we can get some context around the cancellations.
We’ve found that having a tightly integrated system for product management, operations and customer support really reduces the loop between support and operational issues and resolving those via product improvements.
Planio for Product Management
We hope you’ve found some insights into how we use Planio for product management that you can put into practice. You can also check out our specific guides on using the Agile board here or setting up the Help Desk here.
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09/30/2021 66/92 The Redmine Guide
Redmine is the most popular open-source project management tool. You'll find out about the common use cases, why people use Redmine, approaches to issue tracking and project management features.
It's perfect for giving you or your team members a quick introduction to Redmine and what it can do for your team.
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What Is Redmine?
Redmine helps teams work together.
Redmine is primarily an issue tracker. An issue tracker is a to-do list that's focused on accountability and forward progress on issues, which can be tasks, bugs or requests.
Redmine also includes project management aspects. You can plan out milestones on Gantt charts. You can also use Agile project management techniques such as Scrum or Kanban via Redmine plugins.
A third aspect of Redmine is how you can share ideas. There's a blog for project updates. You can discuss ideas in a forum. You can create a wiki to store knowledge and document projects.
Who Makes Redmine?
Redmine is an open-source project. Jean-Philippe Lang released the first version of Redmine in 2006. Since then, a community of open-source developers have expanded and improved upon Redmine. Every day people from around the world work to make Redmine even better.
Open source means you can download, use and re-write the source code. If you see something that is broken, you can contribute a fix or patch to solve the problem.
All of the developers at Planio have contributed to the Redmine core. You'll find more about the project at Redmine.org.
What's the Link Between Planio and Redmine?
Planio is based on Redmine with many enhancements. For instance, Planio adds a Help Desk, Agile project management features, Git hosting and Team Chat. In addition, many organizations choose Planio for significant cost savings over hosting Redmine themselves. You can read more here about Redmine, Planio, and Open Source.
Who Uses Redmine?
Hundreds of thousands of organizations worldwide use Redmine to get more done ranging from Fortune 500 organizations right down to individual freelancers.
Agencies
Redmine and email work well together. That means your clients can continue using email, but you can manage the emails as issues inside of Redmine. You can also create custom roles for your clients, so they can get involved in the discussions in Redmine. This involvement will help reduce conflict and help you work more efficiently with them. We've written more about how you can improve client relationship management with Redmine: Client Relationship Management: Avoiding the Black Box Problem
Startups
It’s very chaotic trying to start a business out of nothing. That’s why many startups use Redmine to organize their efforts. Redmine is a good choice because you can use it to handle software development and you can also handle incoming customer support tickets.
Software Developers
Redmine is uniquely suited for software development. It’s highly integrated with Git and Subversion. The wiki is often used to document software projects. You can even update Redmine issues from the command line using Git commit messages if you set up Redmine correctly or use Planio.
Open Source Projects
You’ll find that open source projects often use Redmine as a way to organize the project. The Ruby programming language is one very high profile project that uses Redmine as its bug tracker.
Universities
Redmine is a favorite for universities as a way of letting students and researchers organize their projects. Examples include The Philipp University of Marburg, which uses Planio as hosted Redmine to organize research projects.
Redmine lets you make certain aspects of your projects public, while keeping other aspects private, which is great for universities that want to involve
09/30/2021 67/92 the public in research projects.
Why Do People Use Redmine?
Get in Control
To-do lists get out of hand, and they’re hard to share with others. Issue tracking in Redmine brings teamwork to to-do lists. Redmine lets you have a powerful workflow for getting tasks done and reviewing work. You can discuss problems and find solutions with others.
Keep Information in One Place
The wiki lets you create documentation for software, work practices and more. You can store important files in one place.
Collaborate Through Discussion
You have an idea? The forums let you discuss it publicly with your team members. You make announcements via the blog.
Accessible from Anywhere
Redmine is accessible anywhere you have an Internet connection.
Issue Tracking
Issue tracking is core to Redmine. Most of your day-to-day work in Redmine will revolve around creating, updating and closing issues. You'll find more about issues here: Issue Tracking in Redmine
1. Creating Issues 2. Updating Issues 3. Creating Issues from Email 4. The Issue List 5. Custom Queries 6. How Do You Use Issues?
Project Management with Redmine
Redmine offers much more than just issue tracking. It also lets you track the progress of your projects, monitor how much time tasks are taking and visualize the end date.
There’s three different ways to track and manage projects in Redmine.
The Roadmap
You can divide up your project into various milestones. You can then see how far along each chunk is. You can also dig down into which tasks are holding up reaching a particular milestone, and you can also see the time spent on the milestone.
Gantt Chart
This will let you visualize the different aspects. An issue will only appear on the Gantt chart if you enter a start and finish date for that issue.
Agile Project Management
This doesn’t come with Redmine core, but you can add it via plugins. A good example is the Redmine Agile plugin. We include this plugin by default at Planio. It lets you use agile techniques or the scrum framework. The issues will then appear on a Kanban-style board. You can drag-n-drop the issues around depending on their status. You'll find more in this guide on agile project management.
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09/30/2021 68/92 Issue Tracking in Redmine
Issues in Redmine can be tasks, ideas, software bugs or support tickets. Redmine is highly configurable, so you can create custom issue types for specific situations.
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Issues
Issues are the atomic element of any Redmine account. You need to create a project before you can create issues, because every issue is connected to one project.
For example, at Planio we have separate projects for English support tickets and German support tickets, because different team members are working on them. We also have projects for different areas such as marketing and the Planio website.
Let’s create a new issue:
Creating an issue
Updating Issues
As you progress through a task, you can update the issue with the latest status. You can also re-assign it to someone else and you can add notes with questions or ideas. You can also upload files as attachments.
Updating an issue
Creating Issues from Email
09/30/2021 69/92 You’re walking around town, getting things done. You realize that you didn’t add the new office party as a task in Redmine.
No problem. You can quickly email your project's Inbox with some details, and an issue will be automatically created in Redmine.
Creating an issue via email
The Issue List
You’ve created a bunch of issues, and you want to start to get an overview of the issues.
The issue list is your central hub for seeing the latest status in a project.
In the beginning, it will be easy to see all the issues on one page. However, as you start getting a lot done with Redmine, the amount of issues will grow.
At Planio we have over a quarter of a million issues in our own Planio account. That’s a lot of issues!
Happily, Redmine comes with powerful ways to drill down into issues, so you can pull out only the relevant issues.
Filtering issues
The options let you quickly pull out the information that is relevant to you.
Issue list options
09/30/2021 70/92 Custom Queries
You can save a particular filter for quick access in the future. For example, if you want to see all the high priority issues that are assigned to yourself, you can save that as High Priority Issues and you’ll be able to access it quickly in the sidebar.
Custom queries
How do You Use Issues?
Tasks
You have a task to get done? Create an issue and assign it to yourself. Once you’ve done your part, you can assign the task to someone else for review or finishing.
You can use the Task tracker, which is the default tracker. Trackers are just different types of issues. By default, Redmine comes with 3 different trackers. If you don’t know what you should choose, Task is a good choice.
You can tell the person you’re assigning the task to information such as the priority (high, normal or low), and you can set a due date.
Setting a start date and a due date means you’ll be able to visualize the task on the Gantt chart. The assignee will also get email updates if the task isn’t completed on time.
The category field lets you group similar tasks together, which can be handy for finding and reviewing later.
Finally, you can add the task to a particular sprint or milestone, which is a good idea if you want to use Redmine’s project management features.
Ideas
You have an idea? You can quickly store it in Redmine as an issue. You just click on New issue, give it a subject line and then describe your idea in the description.
Often, you’d like other people to get updates on the issue even if they aren’t assigned to it. For example, you want them to hear about your amazing new idea.
Therefore, you can set them as watchers for that issue. They’ll get emails notifying them of any new updates on the issue.
Bugs
Perhaps you’ve found a bug in your web application. You could create an issue in the web app’s project within Redmine and assign it to one of the developers. You can describe the bug, and perhaps include a screenshot as a file attachment.
If you’re an advanced user, you might even consider creating custom fields for bug tracking. For example, you could have a custom field for the OS or browser version. That would let you quickly filter out all the bugs for a particular device or browser.
Support Requests
You can set up Redmine, so that your users can email [email protected] and their email will show up as an issue in Redmine. This makes it easier to manage the responses.
You can also turn Redmine into a fully featured Help Desk via plugins. For example, we include our own Help Desk in Planio.
When the Help Desk is activated, you’ll see extra fields in issues for the company and contact.
09/30/2021 71/92 « Back to the Redmine Guide
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09/30/2021 72/92 Use Planio's Git repositories with Eclipse
This guide explains how to set up Eclipse to use Planio's Git repositories using EGit. Both Eclipse and EGit are free and can be downloaded from eclipse.org.
{{>toc}}
Set up a key pair using Eclipse and store your public key in Planio
Select "Window" -> "Preferences" from the Eclipse application menu. Navigate to "General" -> "Network Connections" -> "SSH2". Select the "Key Management" Tab.
Click "Generate RSA Key...". Click "Save Private Key..." and store it as "id_rsa" in the ".ssh" directory within your home folder.
Copy the public key (displayed in the text area) into your clipboard. Open Planio in your browser, navigate to "My account" -> "Public keys" and click on "New value".
09/30/2021 73/92 Enter a title for your key. It makes sense to have one key per computer you use, so a good name would be e.g. "Work Laptop". Paste the key you copied to the clipboard in the "Key" field and click on "Create".
Install EGit
Select "Help" -> "Install New Software...".
Select "All Available Sites" from the drop down next to "Work with". Type "egit" in the search field. Check the box next to "Eclipse EGit (Incubation)" and click on "Next >", accept the terms and click on "Finish" to install EGit.
Make your first commit
Open a context menu for your project, select "Team" -> "Share Project...", then select "Git" and click "Next >".
09/30/2021 74/92 Select your project and click on "Create Repository" to create a local Git repository, then click "Finish". Open a context menu for your project, select "Team" -> "Add" to add your local changes to the cache. Open a context menu for your project, select "Team" -> "Commit" to commit your local changes to the (local) repository.
Enter a commit message and perform your first commit. If being asked for your name and email address, please enter the information as needed.
09/30/2021 75/92 Open a context menu for your project, select "Team" -> "Remote" -> "Push..." and enter your Planio repository URI in the URI field. You can find your Planio repository URI in your Planio account by navigating to the "Repository" tab.
Then, click on "Next >" and select "master [branch]" as a source ref and confirm "refs/heads/master" as a destination ref.
09/30/2021 76/92 Finally, click on "Add spec", then on Finish. If being asked for a password for secure local storage, select a password and click OK. This password is used to encrypt Eclipse data locally, you should not use your Planio password here. Your project should have been pushed to Planio's remote Git repository.
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09/30/2021 77/92 Set Up Team Chat in Planio
Team Chat lets you quickly make decisions together with your team in real time from your phone or computer.
You'll also have a real-time feed of the latest updates on your project on any device, and you'll be able to ping any team member when you need to talk to them.
{{>toc}}
How Can You Use Team Chat?
You can chat with your team members directly inside Planio, on desktop clients or on your mobile about a project. You can discuss an issue in chat, and your chat will be easily accessible from that issue, so you’ll have all the discussion around the issue in one place. You can ping people by writing their name, so you can quickly ask them a question. They’ll get a notification, so they’ll know about it straight away. You can search the entire chat log using search. Everybody can simply look up what has been said on a subject and absent people can catch up on past chats easily. You'll see chat notifications on updates made within Planio.
Activate Planio Chat and Get Your Planio Chat Credentials
Log into your Planio account and select the project for which you want to enable team chat.
Go to Apps in the navigation bar and make sure Team Chat is installed. It’s an optional extra, so you might have to upgrade to use it.
Install the Chat App
Once installed, you’ll see a chat tab in the bottom-right of the screen. You can start chatting here.
You can use chat from within Planio
You'll also find Chat Logs in the navigation bar. Click on it, and you’ll see a history of all chat messages. On the right, you’ll see a sidebar with chat credentials. You’ll have to enter your account password to see the Server password.
09/30/2021 78/92 You'll find your chat credentials in this sidebar
You’ll need these credentials to set up chat on mobile devices and desktop IRC clients.
Set Up Team Chat on Your Favorite Device
Choose your platform below:
Colloquy for iOS AndroIRC for Android
Colloquy for Mac Pidgin for Windows
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09/30/2021 80/92 Set up Team Chat on Windows using Pidgin
Pidgin is a free IRC client for Windows, which you can use for Planio team chat on your desktop.
{{>toc}}
Download and install Pidgin
Download and install Pidgin for Windows.
Add a new Account
Click on the Add button on the welcome screen to add a new account.
Click 'Add'
In the basic tab:
Protocol should be set to IRC Username should be the hostname from your credentials Server is also the hostname from your credentials Password is the password from your credentials Check Remember password, so you don't always have to re-enter it Local alias is your chat name
Fill out the basic tab
In the Advanced tab:
The Port should be the port number from your credentials
09/30/2021 81/92 Tick Use SSL, so your chat is secure Ident name should be the user name from your credentials
Fill out the advanced tab
Start Chatting
Click on 'Add' and you'll be automatically connected to the project chatroom.
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09/30/2021 82/92 Set Up Team Chat on Your Android Device using AndroIRC
Let’s install chat on your Android phone. We'll use AndroIRC in this tutorial.
{{>toc}}
Download AndroIRC
You can install AndroIRC from Google Play Store.
Add Your Planio Chat Server
Once you've installed the app, click on the settings icon and select settings.
Select Settings
Select Servers and then again select settings and select New server.
Here's we'll fill out the connection and authentication settings with our Planio chat credentials (see above):
You can set the Name to whatever you want. The address is the Host name from the credentials. The Port is the port from the credentials. The Password is the Server password You can set the Nickname to what you prefer (perhaps your name) You can leave Alternative blank or enter a slightly modified version of your Nickname, as it's just for the case that someone else the same nickname as you. Ident is the User name from the credentials. Make sure that Secured connection is checked. Ignore the rest of the fields and select the Back icon.
Fill out the fields with your chat credentials
Join the Chat Room
09/30/2021 83/92 Go back to the home screen and select the Plus sign to add your new server. Select it from the list and connect. You'll automatically join the chat room.
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09/30/2021 84/92 Set up Planio Team Chat on Your iOS device using Colloquy
Let’s install chat on your iPhone so you can chat with your team members and get notifications on the go.
{{>toc}}
Install the Colloquy App from the App Store
Open the app store and search for the Colloquy app. The app is a paid app. Install the app and open it.
Install Colloquy
Add a new Connection
Select Add an IRC connection.
Add an IRC connection
Now, we'll fill out the connection fields:
The Description can be whatever you want. The Address is the Host name from your Planio chat credentials (see above). Switch on Push Notifications if you want to be notified when someone mentions your name in chat. Nickname and Real Name will show up as your name in chat.
09/30/2021 85/92 Fill out the connection fields
Scroll down and select Advanced
Select Advanced
Here's we'll fill out the connection and authentication settings with our Planio chat credentials (see above):
Enter the Server Port. Switch on SSL, so your chat will be secure. Enter the Username Enter the Password
09/30/2021 86/92 Fill out the connection and authentication settings
Click back to New Connection and then click on Connect.
Join the Project Room
You can enter the room and start chatting on your iPhone.
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09/30/2021 87/92 Set up Team Chat on Your Mac using Colloquy
You can keep up to date with your project from your desktop using the free Colloquy app for Mac.
{{>toc}}
Download and install Colloquy
Download and install Colloquy from the Colloquy downloads page.
Create a new connection
Open up Colloquy. It will prompt you to create a new connection. If not, you can select File -> New Connection.
Select the Details button and enter your credentials. You'll find these credentials on in your Planio project in Chat logs.
Nickname: enter your name Server Protocol: leave as IRC (Internet Relay Chat) Chat Server: enter the Host name Tick Remember this connection Chat Server Port: see your Planio account SSL Connection: make sure it’s ticked (so your chat will be secure) User name: enter the User name Server password: enter the Server password
Enter your chat credentials
Join the Project Room
Click Connect and you’ll be automatically joined to your project chat room.
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09/30/2021 88/92 Using the Redmine REST API with OAuth 2 at Planio
As you might know, Planio comes with a powerful REST API which covers almost all aspects of Planio.
This guide will show you how to use OAuth 2 for authorizing access to this API.
{{>toc}}
If you were working with the Redmine API before, you know that in order to use it, you had to generate an API key and use that to make authorized API calls.
This approach, while relatively easy to work with, has a few drawbacks:
Each API key is tied to a single user account, meaning that your application will always act as this user when interacting with Planio. There is no way to restrict what an application can do - an API key always grants it's user the same set of permissions that the user it belongs to has.
OAuth 2 defines a mechanism to restrict applications to a certain scope. Further, users need to explicitly grant access to an application before it may act on their behalf. When doing so, they will be informed about the scope, that is, what data the application is going to have access to. In the same way, a user may later decide to revert this decision and revoke access for an application at any time.
Let's look a minimal example for you to try out.
Create an OAuth Application in your Planio Account
In order to use OAuth with Planio, you have to create an Application first. This will generate a unique identifier for your API client, as well as a secret. Both will be used to authenticate your application when it's communicating with Planio.
Go to Your Avatar → Administration → Applications and click New Application.
Creating a new OAuth application
You may enter any descriptive Name for your application. This will be shown later to users when they are about to authorize your app.
The Redirect URI is the location where Planio will redirect a user's browser to after they granted access to your application. The redirect will carry a code query parameter which holds an authorization code that's needed to retrieve the actuall access token later.
For now, enter urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob as the Redirect URI. This special value tells Planio that this application is not reachable over the web. Instead, the authorization code will be simply displayed to the user for manual transfer to the client application requesting access.
Below, in the Scopes section, you decide what your application will be allowed to do. Don't be too generous here, and restrict the set of granted permissions to the minimum necessary. For now, just select the Add issues permission and hit Save below.
You will be redirected to a page that lists the details you just entered, along with the application's Application Id and Secret.
Build the OAuth 2 client
We'll be using the Ruby language and the OAuth2 Gem for this.
Of the various OAuth Flows that exist, Planio currently supports the most commonly used Authorization Code flow. Please refer to the OAuth 2 spec for more technical details. Any applications you create are considered confidential in the sense of the spec, which means that the application secret may not be disclosed. If you require support for a public application (for example a mobile app or an application running exclusively in the browser), please contact us.
Set up the client
09/30/2021 89/92 require 'oauth2' client_id = '...' # your application id client_secret = '...' # your application's secret redirect_uri = '...' # your application's redirect uri site = "https://your-domain.plan.io/" # your planio account's URL client = OAuth2::Client.new(client_id, client_secret, site: site)
Authorize the Application
If you were building a real application, you would now send your user to some URL where they are prompted to grant access. Usually you don't have to construct these URLs yourself, but your OAuth 2 client library will do it for you: client.auth_code.authorize_url(redirect_uri: redirect_uri, scope: 'add_issues') # => https://your-domain.plan.io/oauth/authorize?response_type=code&client_id=...&redirect_uri=...
As scope, list all permissions you are planning to use. You cannot request any permissions that have not been selected when the application was registered in Planio, but you can choose to select less. Here, we only request the add_issues permission in order to be able to add issues.
Open this URL in your browser and you will be prompted for authorization, listing the permissions you are applying for.
Authorizing an OAuth 2 Application
Click Authorize, and take note of the Authorization code. If you had entered a real Redirect URI earlier, you would have been redirected to that URI now, with the authorization code as query parameter.
Retrieve an Access Token
With the authorization code you can now request an access token from your Planio account like this: code = '...' # the authorization code from above token = client.auth_code.get_token(code, redirect_uri: redirect_uri) # => <#OAuth2::AccessToken ...>
If at this point you get an error, it is most likely that the code, which is only valid for a short time, already has expired.
Use the Access Token for API requests
If everything worked out, you may now use the token to do requests against Planio's REST API.
JSON.parse token.get('/users/current.json').body
This will give you some basic information about the user you are acting as. Of course at this point you can stop using the OAuth 2 client and use any other HTTP client to query Planio's API. Let's try with RestClient:
# get the actual token string from the oauth lib token_value = token.token # compile the issue data payload = { issue: { subject: "Hello world" } } # specify the token in the Authorization HTTP header headers = { Authorization: "Bearer #{token_value}"} RestClient.post "https://your-domain.plan.io/projects/some-project/issues.json", payload, headers # =>
And that's it! You successfully created an issue with authorization obtained via OAuth 2.
09/30/2021 90/92 A word on security
As the developer of an OAuth 2 client application it is your responsibility to keep the application secret as well as any auth and refresh tokens you obtain safe - any unintended disclosure may lead to unauthorized access to your users' data.
Manage your Authorized Applications
Click on Your Avatar → My Account → Authorized Applications in order to see the list of applications that currently have access to your account.
List of authorized apps
Clicking Revoke will invalidate any access or refresh token that the application might still possess and remove it from the list.
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09/30/2021 91/92 SparkleShare support has ended
Using SparkleShare is no longer officially supported. To sync files and folders with your desktop, we recommend to use Planio Storage.
09/30/2021 92/92
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